Where did the idea come from for the book?Della Watson and I started up a poetic correspondence in January 2008, inspired by the letters of Emily Dickinson. We created the characters Crow and Benjamin, writing physical letters and postcards, emails, and tweets to each other. In the beginning, we just wanted to work together on something because of our common interest in ED. But I think it very quickly became an ongoing project that was going to be a complete work, such as a book. So the book started grounded in the 19th century and an older form of written communication, but soon moved into contemporary forms.

What genre does your book fall under?Poetry. I also call it experimental conversation.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?So many possibilities here: Steve Buscemi and Helen Hunt, for example. Definitely not Nicole Kidman, though I admire her work, because Crow won't allow it.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?In this book, the flotsam and jetsam of Benjamin and Crow's multifaceted correspondence is reconstructed in loosely connected poetic forms; also, it will make you laugh.

03/28/2013

There's a chain letter goin' around poetry circles these days. Writers respond to 10 questions and then tag other writers, who must then respond to the same questions and tag more people. Where will it stop? Who knows. I was tagged by two people — Marissa Bell Toffoli and Alexandra Mattraw — so it looks like I'm up at bat. --interview questions provided by the internet; answers by Della Watson

Where do ideas come from? Neurons firing. People sending data to other people. Being alive...

Here's the story: About five and a half years ago, Jessica Wickens and I met. We quickly discovered that we had both written manuscripts inspired by Emily Dickinson. (Emily D. is a master of letters.) So we decided to collaborate on an epistolary project. We wrote lots of letters and postcards and emails and tweets. (Writing is a fun thing to do with friends.) Our correspondence eventually grew into a book.

Then we created the Bay Area Correspondence School so that we could write with more of our friends. Our mission is to examine the nature of correspondence and community in the age of social networking. Also, we want to have fun. We fill each other's mailboxes; we have mail-art making parties and construct art actions. If you're interested, please join us.

In some ways, the project has a life of its own. I'm interested to see how it grows and evolves.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry. It could also be called process art, social-media art, performance art, epistolary art, or conceptual art. Or you could just call it fiction if that would make you want to read it. :-)

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

To answer this question, I'll quote from the book (page 66):

"i want to be played by the ugliest actress in the business. and she should never, ever, take off her nerdy glasses, shake out her mousy hair, and suddenly become beautiful. it is also important to specify that nicole kidman should not be involved."

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In a post-apocalyptic world, the reader is an archeologist who must piece together scraps of correspondence to learn about the lives of two friends named Crow and Benjamin.

03/14/2013

You are shoes in my head I see your black shoes swaying below white socks you keep swaying you keep swinging I see you swinging your black shoes under white socks not moving hanging socks not moving sagging black socks over white shoes swaying you keep your head over black jacket over shoes moving in my head you are in my head swinging your black shoe falling from your swaying body, moving, hanging

Patrick: Is there anything more cliché than a Bigfoot walking across an open field in the moonlight? Saltwater taffy is the tragic end result. You’d have to be drunk to let the angels talk you down off a ladder like that. Even Heaven has leaves that need to be raked.

Me: The greens in the tree leaves at 3 a.m. are almost two-dimensional against the pure white street lamp. God paints with the eyes of a child. Adult and sober eyes look past colors and moments as they do stop lights on the ride to work. I rode with an Indian Summer calm on the bus to town, sat on a wall in Harvard Square, found solace in black tea, watched a homeless man throw slices of stale bread at birds. These moments are a fleeting human rhythm, American life, a merry-go-round outside of Wal-Mart: it was fun when you were young, but the horses were plastic and you never really got anywhere.

I was growing out of the comfort of art-punk subculture. Things were simpler when rebellion was a black-haired second-hand jacket and the blind idealism of teenage going

twentynothing. Three chords on untuned strings; youth left to Mothra flicks and squares taped off inside banks for break dancing. My friends would drive northeast into jacket-deep personalities and I would find myself running half naked and raving through the amnesia streets of Boston.

05/11/2012

05/07/2012

The men who surveyed the year two thousand and eight for the government had them dig up the month of November to lay new weeks and days, except, the workmen ran behind schedule and now there’s nothing but road cones where the end of Autumn used to be.

We’re left without a month, but there are still days to be filled. So fill them with empty speculation. We do not live in fear of words, just certain grammatical orderings and implications.

They’re still using filmstrips in the classroom of my mind, you know. Our current textbook ended with the passing of my mother and all of the supplemental materials are back-ordered. We’re passing the days with busy work and “magazine time.”

The great poet stood in the center of the gazebo, smoking a cigar in what was left of his tuxedo. This time tomorrow, some folks will be in California, some in Central America, and some lost on road maps everywhere from New York City to Chicago. There was wine enough that the great poet found himself on the dance floor, his vest being admired by someone not his date.

Winter is coming, while poets and surveyors both watch helplessly as the Earth rotates under their feet. No one knows what happens when the cigar is finished, when the car is packed, when the Tom Waits record in the humid mountain air skips and disappears into now empty weeks.

05/01/2012

Caveats: the city is dead! Its sewer grates have choked to death on cherry blossoms. All of the city’s umbrellas have blown inside-out in mourning. The funeral is proceeding down Massachusetts Avenue led by five hundred collegiates from west of the Mississippi.

Should we talk about the government? The first tape I ever wore out was Huey Lewis’ Sports – played it to breaking in my walkman.

If you wrote a poem naming everything within a place (and I make no illusions this poem would be epic) it would capture place outside of time. Poetry by nature is incomplete. We accept this? We accept this. We don’t know any sleight of hand for parties.

“Half their age and twice the talent.” Oh god, are they really playing this song? Who was this? It was nice of criticism to hold the door for her.

A poetry that created a place is built through a catalog of the many, many ordinary. In what order does the ordinary catalog? What happens when the monument is captured and you then insert perspective? Projective place?

Wet hair reflected in wet pavement our boots angrily talking to the sidewalk. Our economy graphed and look: the constellation Cassiopeia! Our ambitions are wearing their Carhartt coats today. Our ambitions are trying to take a right turn from the left-hand lane.

04/28/2012

08/05/2011

THE INTERNET was so fun and exciting that we decided to extend the theme for more than one week, but it's finally time to move on to our next project. Drum roll, please....

Wunderkammer is now accepting submissions for our next theme: GEOGRAPHY.

If you'd like to contribute, send your poems, illustrations, paintings, videos, or stories about geography, landscape, maps, or directions to wunderkammer.poetry@gmail.com. Please include the word "submission" in the subject line of your email.

06/22/2011

With a camera in my right hand and a camcorder in my left, I document every family gathering. These people won’t be here forever, besides it gives me something to do other than talking. They’ll go to sleep and forget, yet I will not.

After school I watch boyfriends come and go, different fashions and hair loss. Chelseah before Mom filled her teeth in. Mom hot. Mom big. Mom small. Dad sneaking away every five minutes on the hour.

Suddenly I’ve got friends, not mail, friends waiting to be friends, waiting to be verified as friends who have friends who are friends with other friends who I might already know and some people I want to be friends with are pending which is to say they haven’t accepted or rejected being friends perhaps have so many requests for friends they can’t keep up or are friends only by special invitation. People want suggestions for friends and make clever remarks or simply write what they’re doing right now which ought to including writing but are more like Mary Contrary is wondering why day old coffee heated up tastes like pencil lead or Dick says early rain we’re having or Jane says someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, ya ya. These friends often sneak weird pictures of other friends, write messages on their walls, post pictures of their babies instead of themselves so that the face you’re writing to is way too young to read. Some new friends are very new and want you to send them more friends. Then there is a “friend” who somehow got into your group. She’s posted a drag or photo-shopped image and she belongs to several computer game groups that have Blood in their names is always posting her progress and inviting you to blood events. In this case blood is not thicker than water, so you hit Ignore. You’d like to dump her as a “friend” but worry about hurting her feelings which aren’t virtual though who knows. Fortunately, this site actually does not notify friends that they are blocked. How does this work? Here she is thinking she’s still your friend and you don’t get anymore of her invitations or karmas or messages.

So-and-so has just joined the I-for-This-and-Not-for-That group. Another friend writes on your Wall, Hey, this is old Greg, watcha doing in my waters? You write back, I just had a double burger hold the bread.

I thought the most important thing I’d heard recently is that the “common” grave which contains Federico Garcia Lorca, resting in duende, and several other victims of Franco’s slaughter is about to be dug up on account of the new Historical Memory Law in Spain which supercedes the Forget History Law. Some relatives of Lorca’s grave-mates, not Lorca’s, want to check to see just who is really there and have the peace of knowing. Lorca’s niece, who speaks perfect English and has the wonderful last name Garcia Lorca, says the family is opposed. However, they will respect the wishes of other implicated parties. But she’d like her uncle to be reburied in the same spot with the same mates who suffered the same fate. So I posted online, I hope Garcia Lorca is returned to the same spot, but no one responded. What kind of friends do I have here?

04/26/2011

Our artists worked hard to capture every detail of her black fabric shade and the eeriest eyes to ever ever wrap around your tree. Whether you display this or choose the piped version with included recirculating pump, this timeless art zombie will claw his way out of Brussels for more than 300 years. Please bear in mind that our quality designer resin accepts your 60-watt bulb, attaches to your tree, arrives in three pieces, and will bring the rich palette of Egypt to your home, garden plot, office, or family room corner! Act now, and we’ll include chic knee-high boots, a trendy cocktail dress, and accentuated curves, all the while pleading for assistance!

Not thinking twice, she nipped off the head of the small intruder, which peeped. She sat all afternoon then, pondering her abrupt, but not uncalled for act of what some might call violence, others mercy. She sat first in the kitchen, then in the front room, finally on the stool in the pantry, lacing her fingers together, flexing them, thinking about her dexterity.

Later in the evening—an hour after a dinner of roasted parsnips and squab, over which her husband, for certain, private reasons, had openly wept—as she sat in the rocking chair in her bedroom knitting, she remembered a moment from her youth, a moment of indescribably brevity, a look her father had given her after watching her snatch a bee from its flight.

She went to bed, pulled her cap over her eyebrows, her quilt over her mouth, slept, and dreamt the following page of text from a novel, the title of which remained obscure:

again took a step toward the unmoved and seemingly immobile Lord Ratchetton. Her breath stuck in her throat as she realized she was now finally close enough to him to apphrehend his scent. She feared what it might do to her and so held her breath.

If Lord Ratchetton noticed Sheila's nervousness, he made no sign. He remained standing in front of her, stoic and stony as only a man of his breeding and position might. Eventually, he saw her pinken, then redden. She fainted. Lord Ratchetton took one step forward, and caught her about the waist.

Later, after they were married, she would tell a story about how she was revived by a bright, clean smell. Her audience usually smiled politely or congratulated her again on her great good fortune. She always discreetly omitted the detail that her second sensation upon reawakening was one of simultaneously having her neck scrubbed with bristles and being unbuttoned—a sensation to which she gladly abandoned herself. Her audience, however, already

She awoke exactly eight hours later in the same position in which she had fallen asleep. She opened her eyes, and thought of her father, a small toad she had once kept as a pet, a cup of coffee, her mother’s corset, and her husband—in that order. She got out of bed and went to her husband’s room only to find that not only was he not there, but his bed showed no signs of having been slept in. This did not disturb her in any conventional or expected sense. Instead, it made her think again of the corset.

04/24/2011

Somewhere, she thought, somewhere there is a photograph wherein people are baring too many teeth, convinced for whatever reason that this moment is the happiest—No, she thought, it isn’t happiness that people show with their teeth, at least not always—sometimes, yes, that she had to admit, but not always—no, what people usually showed with their teeth was what they thought happiness might be.

She didn’t believe, like many of her more cynical friends, that most people were desperately unhappy; rather, she was quite convinced that people simply didn’t know what happiness was—not something lasting, but brief moments, which, now that she thought about it, could probably only be captured by a camera—and what she wanted, what she was looking for, was a photograph where too many people were baring their teeth at a singular, central character who had come to them to elicit this very facial expression. He would, of course, be wearing white gloves.

What, she wondered, do white gloves have to do with happiness? But these are my desires, she though, I’m the one painting—no, composing this photograph which must already exist somewhere in the world.

What else? The color red? Supple leather? Yes and no. Both of these things and something more. Three shades of red, and something blue. The leather, upon further rumination, seemed inconsequential.

Fleece? Garlands? Warmth and merriment? Overhead bins? A fat man?

Then she found it. I’ve found it, she thought. In the photograph, just above the center point (which, she thought, is occupied by someone baring his teeth at something the viewer can’t see), just above, there is a balding man who hasn’t shaved in two days. He is not baring his teeth, but the corners of his mouth turn up slightly anyway. The viewer can only see his head, and he is staring directly at the camera.

Crow - we have to ask, eventually will these matters matter - marsupial, the man-horse-hay, chocolate egg, idolatry, beach ball, dribbling into sanity w/o sense for love or quality, maybe. under chin to paw. drooling on one's tail, for instance. it's the same but easier, finally, to joke in the locker room. muffle these lights in silence. for now, our orbits are strong. lazy mouth, miracle canyon, let's ride.

10/21/2010

Janice-Katie wanted to leave. She wanted to scoop up a handful of mini-sheep and another handful of mini-goats and take them back to the home she shared with Mrs. Beck. She thought of the fear they must feel when the petals of the object whirred shut above their small, soft heads. The way they would buck and shudder. The way they would scream.There were no windows in the laboratory, but Janice-Katie had always relied on an excellent sense of direction. Despite the many twists and turns through hallways that had led them to this room, she felt certain that she could backtrack and escape. Mrs. Beck stared at Dr. Scoot, mouth agape. “You grow these animals to their full size and slaughter them? No wonder it smells like blood and bleach in here. I thought it was you.”Janice-Katie wondered why the bunnies and goats and cows and pigs stayed. Was it similar to the feeling that made her certain her bones were turning to powder, and that if she tried to get up from her bed she would only collapse? There seemed to be no mechanism holding them in place. They nuzzled their companions freely. She closely observed Dr. Scoot for a few moments, not noticing any sinister posturing or conflicts between his words and gestures. He said he was a concerned scientist. So what if he was mad. “We let them go, gently, before we put them in the Egg. That’s what we call this contraption,” he said, pride in his voice.“You inject them with poisons!” Mrs. Beck said.“No, no,” he said. “Mrs. Beck,” he said, “I do a lot of reading. Do you?”“Who has time to clutter her head with things that are untrue?” she said.“But there are many true things in books. I learned from books what a powerful emotion fear is. And I also learned about love.”“Oh come on, Janice-Katie,” Mrs. Beck said. “It’s just another man who wants to ogle you. Let’s go home where the animals are sized normally. I’ll make some brownies.”Janice-Katie stayed where she was. Sometimes she felt like she was overflowing with love. It electrified her fingers and made her antsy. Mrs. Beck thought it was anxiety, but Janice-Katie knew that the symptoms could mirror each other. At night, while she paced and flipped her hands, she thought of how many things mouths could do, and how much easier it was to move around than to stay still. She wanted to love one of those mini-bunnies. She wanted to put it in her mouth and swirl it around. She wanted to spit it out and cuddle it against her cheek. She wanted to kiss it and kiss it and kiss it and kiss it and kiss it.

Mrs. Beck made a wet noise that sounded like disapproval. Janice-Katie had quite forgotten she was there.“Don’t kiss anything!” shouted Dr. Scoot. Mrs. Beck leaned forward at the waist, ready to make lip contact with a tiny bunny.“But they look so sweet,” Janice-Katie said, “with their eyelashes and their smallness.” She wanted to kiss one, too. She wanted to kiss all of them, the mini-animals, running her lips along their fur, letting it get caught up in her mouth. She wanted to put their small heads in her mouth, one by one, just bringing her lips closed around their small necks for a moment, just to feel the movement inside of her mouth, the cuteness, the alive.“I’ll let you kiss one later,” Dr. Scoot said. “Where’s the cake?” Mrs. Beck said.“I didn’t have you pegged as a weak person, Mrs. Beck. Please be patient.” Dr. Scoot didn’t allow Mrs. Beck to retort. He said many things, rapidly, staccato, things that seemed like chants or magical mantras or incantations or prayer. All the while he spoke he used a series of bulky metal keys in succession, on a round object that did not look like it would open.Finally, the round object fell apart like a dream. It hissed.At the center of the now opened round object there was a pedestal, and perched on the pedestal was the smallest piece of cake Janice-Katie had ever seen. Mrs. Beck snorted. “That’s more crumb than cake!” she said.

10/11/2010

For a long time, people commented on Janice-Katie’s youthful appearance by using diminutive forms of her name, like Janny-Kate, which sounded to her like food, and by tying her shoelaces when they came undone. “A woman who can keep her own house does not need to have her hair braided into pigtails while waiting for the bus,” she said to Mrs. Beck, her long-term companion.Mrs. Beck stirred in her mid-day sleep, and murmured something about adolescence. She often was the perpetrator of such diminishing actions, zipping up Janice-Katie’s coat all the way to the chin, prohibiting running in the house, blowing on her food. Janice-Katie was not a child. She decided to take action in a decisive way, although she usually disapproved of self-improvement plans. She would eliminate her acne by avoiding dairy and meats, thus allowing her hormones to be her own, and dissociating her appearance with youth. She ate a pear without brie as a mid-afternoon snack. She used a knife to cut it and ignored Mrs. Beck’s barking protestations. Her stomach ailments abated by whole grain and legumes, her skin radiant from not eating the fear of tortured animals, Janice-Katie attracted unwelcome male attention.“Men are visual creatures,” Mrs. Beck said. “Now, as well as being a pushover, you’re a traditionally smoking-hot older lady. You would make a good third wife.”Mrs. Beck accompanied Janice-Katie on her daily around-town perambulations to protect her from ogling men. Janice-Katie kept a furious pace, swishing her arms at her sides, breathing heavily through her mouth. “I wish I could afford to get my feet scraped,” Mrs. Beck said. Her breath puffed erratically.Janice-Katie sped up. She could see a man wearing a lab coat in a field in the distance. He held a cane and shouted with much bluster.“I’m Dr. Scoot,” the man said. “Please don’t come any closer.”Janice-Katie acted like she hadn’t heard the man.“Please stop,” Dr. Scoot cried out. “What is your name? What is your business?”“I’m Janice-Aggressive,” Janice-Katie said.Mrs. Beck brought up the rear and exclaimed, “For hell’s sake! These are abominations!”

10/07/2010

Because the pizza was sour. Because the warm eggs, bread, and milk were sour and because soap foam and water in the morning is always so warm and so sour.Because I spent all morning washing and stretching Mrs. Beck’s trousers and because her legs are swelling still. Because Mrs. Beck has leg-veins like dead, grey worms.Because stitch, loop stitch, her breath is diseased. Her worn, yellowed furniture is diseased.Because I don’t like outer space, among other things. Because she is having another spell. Because sometimes when I go out each day, as I feel I should, Bill Orange is sometimes out there, too. He doesn’t wash his hair with water, either. Or anything. I love him because his hair looks original, like melted plastic.Because Bill Orange asks if I’ve ever been to Holland and asks if I want Dutch soup. I know it isn’t really Dutch soup and that he hasn’t ever been to Holland either, but in his soup I taste his version of Holland. Also it’s my version because I asked for the Dutch soup cold. In this way, Bill Orange and I make something together. It isn’t any good, but we made it. In my mind I go around town saying: Bill Orange and I made bad cold Dutch soup together that we learned to make in Holland.Because Bill Orange gets concerned when I want to eat cold things on a cold day. But he does not really get that concerned and lets me eat the cold thing anyway. In his own way, Bill Orange grants all my wishes without knowing it. Because Bill Orange understands that my joke about barricading the house so that Mrs. Beck, who I do not love remotely, can never come in again, is not really a joke. Because Bill Orange makes his own joke where he threatens Mrs. Beck with his finger and with police and gives me a fantasy wherein Mrs. Beck no longer exists except in a cell. I can appreciate Mrs. Beck when I imagine her locked up; in this way, Bill Orange is the only thing on the planet that allows me to appreciate Mrs. Beck.Because Bill Orange will never do huge, exciting things; because he will never do awful things, either. He will never diminish me with any of his accomplishments. But Bill Orange has imaginary plans.Because Bill Orange wears his apron every day, has worn it every day since he was thirteen. Because his whole life he has refused to express what he is afraid of regarding mustard; in that he gives me an overwhelming sense of wonder and curiosity.Because Bill Orange is also sour, but he has a heightened, delicious sour taste. Bill Orange tastes like lemonade although he does not believe in drinking lemonade. Because Bill Orange’s taste is not remotely sexy and therefore unthreatening.Because everything else was sour so I am in love with Bill Orange. That is why anyone loves anyone else, isn’t it? Because Bill Orange is my mild meal, my beige cream.

No—you go, you both go!”“Goodbye!” Bill Orange called softly.

Because there is yet another side of life that no one can seem to express.